Until a few years ago, honey and lemon drinks were something I bought in a packet from the chemist when in the death-throes of a full blown flu.

Naturally, those little packets didn’t help much, so I was skeptical when I started this whole crazy challenge.

Of course, drinking real lemon juice and proper honey in warm water is a totally different experience, and with all the hype around it I embarked on a 12 month quest to see if it really was as miraculous as the trend says.

I am pleased to report I am thoroughly converted, and here is why.

1. I have not had a cold, flu or gastro illness in the entire year.

Literally. On reflection, this actually blows my mind. All of my life I’ve been a serial tonsillitis-getter, and always seemed to pick up whatever was going around. With a large family, including lots of little ones, there is always someone around who has the latest bug. I am happy to report I no longer catch them, even when it rips through the rest of the gang.

commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the United States cannot hide its concern about the growing military capabilities of the Iranian elite force.

Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the IRGC Navy chief, said Tuesday that the strategic weapons tested by the IRGC in its recent drills in south Iranian waters have been a matter of concern for Washington.

“We now have access to new and strategic weapons with exclusive features and while the United States claims it is not worried about these weapons, it cannot hide its concern,” Fadavi said in an interview with al-Alam News Channel.

IRGC began a series of major military drills code-named The Great Prophet 9 on February 25 in the southern Persian Gulf region east of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. In the second day of the maneuvers, a huge model of a US aircraft carrier was struck with nearly 400 rounds of 107-millimeter missiles (shown below).

He emphasized that a new missile tested in the recent IRGC naval exercise was a strategic and exclusive weapon that the United States cannot take lightly.

The senior Iranian commander also highlighted the weakening position of the US Navy in the Persian Gulf, saying that the number of US forces in the area has dramatically dropped over the past several years.

“The United States had over a million troops in the region during the Kuwait war, but the figure has tumbled to 26,000 with a lesser logistic capability,” he said.

He said IRGC is closely monitoring the developments in the Persian Gulf, an area which is under international control. However, Fadavi added that US forces “are not in conditions” to threaten Iranian forces as they are aware of Iran’s dominance in the region.

[I]n the newly uncovered document (.pdf)—a warrant application requesting approval to use a stingray—FBI Special Agent Michael A. Scimeca disclosed the disruptive capability to a judge.

“Because of the way, the Mobile Equipment sometimes operates,” Scimeca wrote in his application, “its use has the potential to intermittently disrupt cellular service to a small fraction of Sprint’s wireless customers within its immediate vicinity. Any potential service disruption will be brief and minimized by reasonably limiting the scope and duration of the use of the Mobile Equipment.”

Notably, the application (and the magistrate's approval) do not refer to the device by any of the common names (Stingray, IMSI catcher, cell tower spoofer, etc.), but rather as "mobile pen register/trap and trace equipment." While it does admit the device will "mimic Sprint's cell towers," it downplays the potential impact of the device's use.

The fact that Stingray devices disrupt cell service isn't new, but an on-the-record admission by law enforcement is. The warrant application claims that numbers unrelated to the ones being sought will be "released" to other cell towers. The unanswered question is how long it takes before this release occurs.

“As each phone tries to connect, [the stingray] will say, ‘I’m really busy right now so go use a different tower. So rather than catching the phone, it will release it,” says Chris Soghoian, chief technologist for the ACLU. “The moment it tries to connect, [the stingray] can reject every single phone” that is not the target phone.

But the stingray may or may not release phones immediately, Soghoian notes, and during this period disruption can occur.

The problem with the so-called "release" is related to the amount of disruption that occurs when the device is used. Advances in cell technology have surpassed the ability of Stingray devices to capture calling info and location data. Upgrades are available and law enforcement agencies are scramblingto get their cell tower spoofers up-to-date, but the general process still involves "dumbing down" everyone's connection to the least secure and most easily-intercepted connection: 2G.

In order for the kind of stingray used by law enforcement to work, it exploits a vulnerability in the 2G protocol. Phones using 2G don’t authenticate cell towers, which means that a rogue tower can pass itself off as a legitimate cell tower. But because 3G and 4G networks have fixed this vulnerability, the stingray will jam these networks to force nearby phones to downgrade to the vulnerable 2G network to communicate.

If a device is in operation nearby, all calls that can't find a better connection will be routed to the cell tower spoofer. This means calls won't be connected, texts won't be sent/received and internet service will be knocked offline. While Stingrays are supposed to allow 911 calls to pass through without interruption, these are far from the only type of "emergency" communications. If the device is deployed for any considerable length of time, citizens completely unrelated to the criminal activity being investigated may find themselves unable to communicate.

And while the targeted number apparently belonged to Sprint, the warrant application notes that allservice providers in the area will be asked to turn over a large amount of subscriber information.

[D]irecting AT&T, T-Mobile U.S.A., Inc., Verizon Wireless, Metro PCS, Sprint-Nextel and any and all other providers of electronic communication service (hereinafter the "Service Providers") to furnish expeditiously real-time location information concerning the Target Facility (including all cell site location information but not including GPS, E-911, or other precise location information) and, not later than five business days after receipt of a request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, all information about subscriber identity, including the name, address, local and long distance telephone connection records, length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized, telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, and means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number), for all subscribers to all telephone numbers, published and nonpublished, derived from the pen register and trap and trace device during the 60-day period in which the court order is in effect…

This request seems to run contrary to what's asserted earlier in the warrant application, in reference to the Stingray device itself.

In order to achieve the investigative objective (i.e., determining the general location of the Target Facility) in a manner that is the least intrusive, data incidentally acquired from phones other than the Target Facility shall not be recorded and/or retainedbeyond its use to identify or locate the Target Facility.

It appears there is a "catch-and-release" policy when it comes to Stingray devices, but the FBI's data request to every cell phone service provider in the area contains no such assurances about minimization. Additionally, the request for data on "all subscribers to all telephone numbers" covers a 60-day period, while the use of the tower spoofer is limited to two weeks.

So, not only did the FBI potentially disrupt cell service while searching for the robbery suspects, it also collected a massive amount of data on every subscriber whose phone happened to connect with its fake tower. It's not really "catch-and-release" if additional call/location data on unrelated subscribers is obtained from from other providers. This broad request was granted without question or additional stipulations by the magistrate judge -- the only limitation applied (in a handwritten addition, no less) being that the FBI would not be able to use the device "in any private place or when they have reason to believe the Target Facility is in a private place." (This falls in line with the FBI's "warrant requirement," which is written in a way that ensures the FBI will never have to seek a warrant for Stingray use.)

The FBI, along with other law enforcement agencies, has refused to answer questions about the disruptive side effects of Stingray device usage. With the unsealing of this document, their silence no longer matters. These agencies are well aware of these devices' capabilities -- something they're clearly not comfortable discussing. The excuses deployed routinely involve "law enforcement means and methods" and claims about "compromising current and future investigations," but with more heat being applied by the nation's legislators, this code of silence may finally be broken. The use of these devices -- despite being fully aware that critical communications may be at least temporarilyprevented -- sends a continual implicit message to the public: your safety and well-being is subjectto law enforcement's needs and wants.

While the Hillary Clinton email fiasco is sure to be the talk of the town for the next few days, weeks, and months and may have seriously jeopardized the former SecState's chances at becoming America's next president, an even more important story is how the revelation that Hillary exclusively used a private, unencrypted and unsupervised email for 4 years of state-level, official business communications, emerged in the first place.

The answer, shockingly, comes courtesy of a Romanian hacker who was known by the handle "Guccifer", and who is currently serving time in a Bucharest prison for his online attacks against countless public figures including the infamous leaks of George W. Bush personal paintings.

How is it possible that a Romanian convict may have helped accelerate the downfall of Warren Buffett's presidential hopeful? According to the Smoking Gun, which first reported on this topic back in March 2013, “Guccifer” illegally accessed the AOL e-mail account of Sidney Blumenthal, who then worked as a senior White House adviser to President Bill Clinton, and later became a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

When “Guccifer” (who was later identified as Marcel Lazar Lehel) breached Blumenthal’s account, he discovered an assortment of correspondence sent to Hillary Clinton at the e-mail address hdr22@clintonemail.com. The “clintonemail.com” domain was registered in 2009, shortly after her nomination to become Secretary of State.

While Blumenthal, a longtime Hillary Clinton confidant, used her private e-mail to send personal messages (like a get well note after she fell at home and suffered a concussion in December 2012), he also forwarded the Cabinet member a series of “Confidential” memos about foreign policy matters.

A snapshot of one leaked email between Blumenthal and Clinton can be seen below:

If Clinton used her own account only emails like the one above, it would be perfectly ok. It wasn't.

Using her personal clintonemail.com address, the “For: Hillary, From: Sid” memos, provided to TSG by “Guccifer,” address a wide range of topics in global flashpoints likeAlgeria, Turkey, Mali, and Libya. Blumenthal also provided Clinton with information about the European Central Bank, the Georgia elections, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Here is a snapshot of the inbox:

All of this happened through a personal email account, using a small Jacksonville, FL shell registrar called Perfect Privacy LLC, which is owned by web.com.

A registrar in whose possessions one can now, or could at one point in the past, find "confidential" memos such as this one from January 15, 2013 on "Libya internal government discussion," which relied on “Sources with direct access to the Libyan National Government."

The core of the issue of police brutality across the US lies in a systematic approach that rewards only punitive actions and ignores any positive interactions with the community, Robert Gangi from the Police Reform Organizing Project told RT.

RT:Is it fair to characterize that perhaps police violence is increasing? Or is it just the public and the media talking about it more?

Robert Ganji: It is a good question, and I do not know what the absolute correct response is. It is certainly true that we are talking about it more. It certainly true that these issues are getting more public attention, a lot more media attention. In New York City, which I’m most familiar with, the issue of discriminatory and abusive policing began to get attention 2-3 years ago around the issue of stop and frisk. Bill de Blasio during the 2013 mayor campaign used the issue of stop and frisk and abusive policing as a centerpiece of his campaign. There was a famous ad in the NYC with his young son, who is obviously a son of de Blasio’s marriage with a black woman, so he is a black race child. He appears to be a black teenager, enormously charming and good looking, and he said: “vote for my father because he is going to eliminate abusive policing and discriminatory policing.”

Obama indicates that remaining options would be limited, including additional sanctions or military actions, if ongoing negotiations with Tehran fail. ‘Why wouldn’t we take that deal?’ the president asked, if there are assurances Iran cannot build a covert nuclear weapons program. (Image: Screenshot/Reuters)

Though voicing no overall criticism of Israeli state policy when it comes various issues involving regional politics, its own nuclear weapons program, or its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the number of U.S. lawmakers who now say they will not attend the speech of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday has grown to nearly 60 members of Congress, with high-profile Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken among the most recent to register their objection to the address.

According to The Hill on Tuesday, nearly a quarter of House Democrats will not attend.

Meanwhile, President Obama sat down with the Reuters news agency and offered his most detailed comments yet about the so-called “rift” that has publicly percolated around the prime minister’s decision to address the joint session just weeks ahead of Israeli elections. The speech also comes amid tense, high-level talks in Switzerland this week, where Iran and the P5+1 nations (the U.S., U.K., China, Russia, France, and Germany) are in the final stages of trying to reach a deal on monitoring for Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Declaring her reasons for not attending the speech, Sen. Warren said, “It’s unfortunate that Speaker Boehner’s actions on the eve of a national election in Israel have made Tuesday’s event more political and less helpful for addressing the critical issue of nuclear nonproliferation and the safety of our most important ally in the Middle East.”

For his part, Sen. Franken said he would not attend Netanyahu’s speech because it had devolved into a “partisan spectacle” he wants no part of. “I’d be uncomfortable being part of an event that I don’t believe should be happening,” Franken said. “I’m confident that, once this episode is over, we can reaffirm our strong tradition of bipartisan support for Israel.”

In his remarks to Reuters, President Obama also affirmed the “depth of the U.S./Israeli relationship” – a bond, he said, that would never be broken.

“I don’t think it’s permamently destructive,” Obama told Reuters in reference to Netanyahu’s visit, “but I think it’s a distraction from what should be our focus. And our focus should be: how do we stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?”

While the Clintons have had their share of funding snafus in recent history exposing the former "not truly well off" first lady as not only a puppet of not only Wall Street but also America's mega corporations, Hillary Clinton's use of personal email accounts as America's former top diplomat is a far more serious issue as it touches directly on accountability, and rational decision-making while in a top position of government power. To say that it impairs her image as a presidential candidate who puts the country ahead of her own interests, would be an understatement.

However, depending on just how aggressive the US DOJ is, it may have criminal implications as well: according to the Weekly Standard, citing CNN conversations with "experts", Hillary Clinton broke the law by using her personal email account to conduct official State Department business while she was secretary of state.

Monday, March 2, 2015

In this episode I speak with Richard Dolan about his latest work, his thoughts on current events, and his upcoming series of presentations in Canada starting in April of 2015. "Historian Richard Dolan, author of four ground-breaking books on the UFO phenomenon, will analyze the UFO cover-up as only he can do. He will explain how the UFO phenomenon has quietly transformed our world: first, from the presence of “other beings” here on our world; second, from the acquisition of radical technology; and third, from the need for eternal secrecy on the matter. All three have contributed to the global system we have today: a nearly complete virtual totalitarianism that requires (for the time being) nearly continuous false flag events to corral and control the public. Using a broad geopolitical approach, Dolan will explain multiple Disclosure scenarios: “Premature Disclosure,” “Preferred Disclosure,” and “People-Driven Disclosure.” The result is a profoundly new way to understand one of the most paramount--and least understood--issues of our time."http://www.modernknowledge.ca/disclos...

(Phys.org)—Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of light at the same time. Now, scientists at EPFL have succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of this dual behavior.

Quantum mechanics tells us that light can behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave. However, there has never been an experiment able to capture both natures of light at the same time; the closest we have come is seeing either wave or particle, but always at different times. Taking a radically different experimental approach, EPFL scientists have now been able to take the first ever snapshot of light behaving both as a wave and as a particle. The breakthrough work is published in Nature Communications.

Journalist Zvika Klien’s project in which he walks through the French Capital with a kippah went viral. It showed him being spit on, scorned, and heads turning in Arab neighborhoods. Poor sound quality, bad translations, and only a minute or so of footage was published. We ask what happened in the other 9 hours and 58 minutes and does this give a true look at life in Europe for Jews. A similar project with a Muslim man walking on the streets on central Milan saw him called “ISIS”, the Taliban and other slurs.

As Russia announces the expansion of its Navy by 50 vessels this year, including two new nuclear-powered submarines and an aircraft carrier, it appears NATO's sabre-rattling has drawn a response/threat/warning. Following British plans to send military 'advisers' into Ukraine (which NATO has stated are not confirmed), TASS reports, Russia's NATO envoy, Alexander Grushko, warns Russia will take all measures against possible NATO threat in Ukraine, adding that Russia’s response may include military measures.

NATO has taken no decisions on sending British or any other instructors to Ukraine, Russia’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko said on Monday.

"NATO has taken no decisions on sending instructors," he told the Rossiya 24 television channel. "NATO is implementing the decisions that were taken at the political level at the Wales summit in September 2014."

Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize possible threat from NATO presence in Ukraine, he added.

The Russian navy will receive 50 vessels of various sizes and classes this year, navy Chief Admiral Viktor Chirkov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Monday.

The new boats are part of a rearmament program begun under President Vladimir Putin that aims to provide Russia with a navy capable of operating far away from home — a capability lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union — by 2050. Russia's navy today is largely relegated to a coastal defense role.

"The period of stagnation in the development of our potential has long since passed," Chirkov said.

In an unprecedented move, 200 veterans of the Israeli security services accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday of being a “danger” to Israel.

The new group, called Commanders for Israel’s Security, warned that Netanyahu was doing irreparable harm to the country’s relationship with Washington, just two days before he is due to address the US Congress.

The Israeli prime minister is expected to use the speech to try to undermine negotiations currently taking place between major world powers and Iran. He has claimed that any agreement reached at the talks’ conclusion, later this month, will leave Iran a “nuclear threshold state” hellbent on destroying Israel.

Half a dozen former generals spoke out at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Sunday, urging Netanyahu to cancel the speech before ties with the US deteriorate even further.

The White House is reported to be furious that Netanyahu arranged his appearance before Congress behind President Barack Obama’s back.

With an Israeli election less than three weeks away, Netanyahu has already faced attacks from centrist political rivals and parts of the Israeli media over his clashes with the White House on Iran.

But it is the first time he has faced a large-scale backlash from members of Israel’s security establishment – and is likely to be more damaging to Netanyahu’s popular image as a strong leader on security matters.

The group comprises retired officers and those serving in the reserves, all of whom held a rank equivalent to general. Many are household names.

Yaron Ezrahi, a politics professor at Hebrew University and expert on Israeli-US relations, said there was no precedent for what he termed a “rebellion” by so many former senior officials.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

This is not a place that many foreign visitors ever see, but is very mysterious, as no one really knows who carved the massive hard stone into a precise U shape. Could it be a ritual place for moon ceremonies? Or a sun dial? Check it out for yourself...and join us and see it for yourself.

Taking under consideration the hundreds of unnatural phenomena that happen on the surface of the moon that NASA never bothered to reveal to the general public but have nevertheless been observed for centuries by independent observers, it may be assumed that the Moon is a constructed spacecraft and not a normal astral body.

To mention but a few of these observations:

The moon is older than the Earth. Carbon dating shows the Earth at 4.6 billion years old and the Moon at 5.3.

The dust around the Moon that is supposed to have come from weathering and the breakup of the rocks on the Moon’s surface, has a chemical composition that does not match the composition of the rocks on the Moon itself. This dust itself is another billion years older than the moon.

While the Moon has no magnetic field, Moon rocks are magnetized.

There is evidence that the Moon craters were created through internal procedures, but the Moon has never been hot enough to create volcanos.

Slowly, all the lies of the "recovery", all the skeletons in the closet, and all the bodies swept under the rug are emerging.

Moments ago, Austrian ORF reported that there have been "spectacular developments" in the case of the Hypo Alpe Adria bad bank, also known as the Heta Asset Resolution, where an outside audit of Heta's balance sheet exposed a capital hole of up to 7.6 billion euros ($8.51 billion) which the government was not prepared to fill, the Austrian Financial Market Authority said.

As a result, according to Reuters, the bad bank that was created in the aftermath of the Hypo collapse, is itself about to be unwound, as the bad bank itself goes bad!

"Austria's Financial Market Authority stepped in on Sunday to wind down "bad bank" Heta Asset Resolution and imposed a moratorium on debt repayments by the vehicle set up last year from the remnants of defunct lender Hypo Alpe Adria."

In short: Austria just cut off state support of what was until this moment a state-backed, wind-down vehicle and a key pillar of trust in what was already a shaky financial system.

Not surprisingly, today's shock announcement comes a week after Austria's Standard reported that up to a five billion euro impairment at Heta would take place, a report which the Finance Ministry called "pure speculation" and noted that the Bank was in good health. According to Standard, among the reasons for the massive capital shortfall was the plunge in collateral as a result of the continuing crisis in South East Europe which meant that the value of "real estate in South East Europe, shopping centers and tourism projects, deteriorated massively" driven largely by the appreciation of the Swiss Franc. "As a result, the volume of bad loans has increased significantly."

Saturday, February 28, 2015

from the um. dept

In the long, convoluted and complex legal battles facing Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, there was some bizarre stuff that happened late last year. As you may recall, early on, the US government seized basically all of his stuff and money. Dotcom has made efforts to get some of it returned, as it's tough to fight the most powerful government in the world when it's holding onto all of your money. Keep in mind from our previous discussions on asset seizure and forfeiture, the government can basically seize whatever it wants, just by claiming it was somehow related to a crime, but the seizure is only a temporary process. If the government wants to keep it, it then needs to go through a separate process known as civil asset forfeiture, which is effectively the government suing the assets. Back in July, the US government moved to forfeit everything it had seized from Dotcom in a new lawsuit with the catchy name USA v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto. As you may have guessed, Attachment A [pdf] is basically all of Kim Dotcom's money and posessions.

Back in November, the DOJ argued that it should get to keep all of Kim Dotcom's money and stuffbecause he's a "fugitive", which is a bizarre and ridiculous way to portray Kim Dotcom, who has been going through a long and protracted legal process over his potential extradition from New Zealand (though he's offered to come to the US willingly if the government lets him mount a real defense by releasing his money). Dotcom's lawyers told the court that it's ridiculous to call him a fugitive, but it appears that Judge Liam O'Grady didn't buy it.

In a ruling [pdf] that was just posted a little while ago, O'Grady sided with the government, and gave the DOJ all of Dotcom's things. You can read the full reasoning here and it seems to take on some troubling logic. Dotcom's lawyers pointed out, as many of us have, that there is no secondary copyright infringement under criminal law, but the judge insists that there's enough to show "conspiracy to commit copyright infringement." But the reasoning here is bizarre. Part of it is the fact that Megaupload did remove links to infringing content from its top 100 downloads list. To me, that seems like evidence of the company being a good actor in the space, and not trying to serve up more infringing downloads. To Judge O'Grady and the DOJ, it's somehow evidence of a conspiracy. No joke.

The government has alleged that the conspirators knew that these files were infringing copyrights, as evidenced by their exclusion of infringing files from the "Top 100" list. The "Top 100" list purported to list the most frequently downloaded files on Megaupload.... According to the government, an accurate list would have consisted almost entirely of infringing content, so the claimants "carefully curated" the list to make the site look more legitimate.... Additionally, the claimants regularly told copyright holders, including many U.S.-based organizations, that they would remove infringing content, when in actuality they only removed particular links to the files.... The actual infringing files remained on the Mega-controlled servers and could be accessed from other links.

As for that latter part, there are tons of perfectly legitimate reasons to only remove the links and not the underlying files. If Megaupload was doing deduping, then some version of the same file could be perfectly legitimate. Let's take an example: say that you and I have an MP3 of a Katy Perry song. I upload it to Megaupload to keep as a backup. You upload it to distribute to the world. Megaupload dedupes it, and just has the file stored one time. Your link could be potentially infringing if you distribute unauthorized copies, whereas my copy may be a legitimate personal backup. Given that, Megaupload should only delete the links that are called out as infringing, rather than the underlying files, which -- depending on their use -- may or may not be infringing. But the court just takes the DOJ's version and says "good enough for me."

The court also has no problem with the fact that most of the assets aren't in the US, noting that since some of the "conspiracy" took place in the US, that's good enough. It more or less brushes off the concerns raised by Dotcom and the other defendants that this appears to violate existing treaties between New Zealand and the US -- basically saying that because Dotcom refuses to come to the US, it's not "punitive." Huh? On top of that, the judge says that taking all of Dotcom's assets shouldn't interfere with the legal process in New Zealand, because the New Zealand courts could (yeah right) reject the DOJ's request after this ruling to hand over Dotcom's assets.

Then we get to the whole "fugitive" bit. Judge O'Grady notes that the statute does allow him to call anyone who "declines to enter" the United States a fugitive, and argues that Dotcom fits that description. Furthermore, he actually argues that Dotcom's offer to the DOJ to come willingly to the US if the money is freed for his defense actually works against Dotcom, and gives weight to the fugitive claim:

As demonstrated, Dotcom need not have previously visited the United States in order to meet the prerequisites of § 2466. The statute is satisfied where the government shows that the claimant is on notice of the criminal charges against him and refuses to "enter or reenter" the country with the intent to avoid criminal prosecution. Because the court assesses intent under the totality of the circumstances, it is certainly relevant that Dotcom has never been to the United States and that he has lived in New Zealand since 2011, where he resides with his family. This tends to show that he has other reasons for remaining in New Zealand besides avoiding criminal prosecution. However, the existence of other motivations does not preclude a finding that he also has a specific intent to avoid criminal prosecution. Dotcom's statements, made publicly and conveyed by his attorneys to the government, indicate that he is only willing to face prosecution in this country on his own terms. See Technodyne, 753 F.3d at 386 (2d Cir. 2014) ("The district court was easily entitled to view those [requests for bail], evincing the [claimants'] desire to face prosecution only on their own terms, as a hallmark indicator that at least one reason the [claimants] declined to return in the absence of an opportunity for bail was to avoid prosecution"). Dotcom has indicated through his statements that he wishes to defend against the government's criminal charges and litigate his rights in the forfeiture action. If it is truly his intent to do so, then he may submit to the jurisdiction of the United States.

In short, damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is the justice system, ladies and gentlemen. The DOJ gets to seize and keep all your money, and merely asking for access to it to fight to show your innocence is used as a reason to allow the DOJ to keep it. So he comes to the US and has to fight criminal charges without his own money, or he stays in New Zealand and the government uses it as an excuse to keep all the money. How is any of this even remotely fair? Where is the "due process" in totally handicapping Dotcom from presenting a defense?

Again, it is entirely possible that Dotcom and the others broke the law -- though the case certainly does look pretty weak to me. But what's really astounding is how far the DOJ appears to want to go to make it absolutely impossible for Dotcom to present a full defense of his case.